What’s your Hi-Fi set up? spec and pictures please

What’s your Hi-Fi set up? spec and pictures please

Author
Discussion

legzr1

3,848 posts

139 months

Thursday 13th February 2020
quotequote all
Tone centred, loudness off - your bass drivers are safe biggrin

gizlaroc

17,251 posts

224 months

Thursday 13th February 2020
quotequote all
TonyRPH said:
In my experience, the vast majority of people I have encountered with even a half decent HiFi system always seem to have the bass cranked right up to the point where it just sounds crap.

People like bass, whether accurate or not.

And the amount of blown woofers I replaced when I did HiFi repairs confirms this, as quite often people would bring both amp and speakers in for repair, and inevitably the loudness button would be engaged and bass control cranked up (often to the max).
You could argue that is because they don't have a sub, or speakers that reproduce the lower octaves.
They then add the loudness and extra bass to try and create the sound they know should be there, but this causes issues and before you know it they have blown the driver.


Loudness should be OK to be fair, if set up correctly it should be nicely stepped so as you increased gain the loudness is reduced, but cranking the bass up to try and give more lower end will end in tears.

Itsallicanafford

Original Poster:

2,764 posts

159 months

Thursday 13th February 2020
quotequote all
legzr1 said:
Tone centred, loudness off - your bass drivers are safe biggrin
...got to treat the old girl with respect! Just out of interest, can anybody shed any light on what the ‘high filter’ and ‘subsonic filter’ is supposed to do?

miniman

24,917 posts

262 months

Thursday 13th February 2020
quotequote all
I do like the loudness turned on I must admit. paperbag

TonyRPH

12,968 posts

168 months

Thursday 13th February 2020
quotequote all
Itsallicanafford said:
...got to treat the old girl with respect! Just out of interest, can anybody shed any light on what the ‘high filter’ and ‘subsonic filter’ is supposed to do?
High filter: This will filter frequencies above a specified frequency (can be anything from 6kHz upwards, depending on design) - often useful for scratched records.

Subsonic filter: This will filter out very low (subsonic) frequencies, and will usually affect frequencies below 50Hz. (useful for warped records)

There are other factors to consider, it's not a simple as above but that's it in a nutshell.

The other factors are filter slope (measured in dB per octave) and filter 'Q'.


Itsallicanafford

Original Poster:

2,764 posts

159 months

Thursday 13th February 2020
quotequote all
^ thanks chap, much appreciated. the amp is used to just stream tidal from my work pc, so I suppose these are not really doing much good if not a vinyl source.


skylarking808

797 posts

86 months

Friday 14th February 2020
quotequote all
Even as a lover of old acid house records I find many overdo the bass in the wrong way with home set ups - and it just annoys any neighbours.

Went to a party once where I was given control of the stereo - I had been the DJ at the bar we had all come from.
The hi - fi was a pretty serious bit of kit as the guy was apparently a millionaire. The "set up" however was shocking. Large speakers dominating the room, with a tricky uni pivot turntable was a challenge to play on!. There was no "mid bass" or texture or even any good old fashioned punch.

I think my system is fairly balanced for when I play some of my old dance tunes at home although David Crosby's first solo album "If only I could remember my name" surprised me with its bass balance. The Dynaudio floor standers have front ports with foam bungs if needed!
In the car however I got an old skool Diamond Audio twelve inch sub which seems to have such control of the lower bass frequencies.

Perhaps we should go back to graphic equalizers lol

gizlaroc

17,251 posts

224 months

Friday 14th February 2020
quotequote all
A sub should never be noticed until it is turned off.

NDA

21,565 posts

225 months

Friday 14th February 2020
quotequote all
legzr1 said:
It must be 30 years since I owned an amp with tone controls. I can’t even remember any friends in that time that have had amps with tone controls or ‘loudness’ buttons.
Same here - my very first proper hifi system in the 1980's had 'The Preamp' from Musical Fidelity at its heart. Just a volume knob - nothing else. I remained loyal to MF and my current system also has a Musical Fidelity preamp with no EQ.

Crackie

6,386 posts

242 months

Friday 14th February 2020
quotequote all
gizlaroc said:
TonyRPH said:
In my experience, the vast majority of people I have encountered with even a half decent HiFi system always seem to have the bass cranked right up to the point where it just sounds crap.

People like bass, whether accurate or not.

And the amount of blown woofers I replaced when I did HiFi repairs confirms this, as quite often people would bring both amp and speakers in for repair, and inevitably the loudness button would be engaged and bass control cranked up (often to the max).
You could argue that is because they don't have a sub, or speakers that reproduce the lower octaves.
They then add the loudness and extra bass to try and create the sound they know should be there, but this causes issues and before you know it they have blown the driver.


Loudness should be OK to be fair, if set up correctly it should be nicely stepped so as you increased gain the loudness is reduced, but cranking the bass up to try and give more lower end will end in tears.
The main speakers I use are quarter wave designs; they have extremely sharp cutoff below the pipe' resonance frequency so I use subs to fill in below that. The main speakers each use a pair of 12" Celestion pro drivers and the enclosure is tuned to 28Hz so they go deeper than most; the subs drivers rarely move on most music tracks but the difference is enormous when the recording contains subsonics or info in the 20s. The big 250 litre reflex sub is tuned to 17Hz with a -3dB at 12Hz.

This is a giggle when you play it loud...….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5kL14FPvnY it doesn't really work on a phone or laptop but its seismic when you hear it on systems that can play into the low teens at full level. The LF extension on this is surprising too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMEHJPuggHQ

Edited by Crackie on Saturday 15th February 11:19

gizlaroc

17,251 posts

224 months

Friday 14th February 2020
quotequote all
I have saved that to listen to later.


Sounds right up my Straße as well!

This is my soundcloud page....

https://soundcloud.com/guymiddleton


Lots of sassy laid back deep bassy numbers on there.

Dr Doofenshmirtz

15,220 posts

200 months

Friday 14th February 2020
quotequote all
Nice to see some Epos speaker owners here.
I worked for the original Epos Acoustics back in the 80's before they were sold to Mordaunt-Short. I wonder if anyone owns an original Epos ES-14 set? I may have assembled them for you...I was the soldering expert for the crossover mainly (a single capacitor inline with the tweeter) smile

Edited by Dr Doofenshmirtz on Friday 14th February 21:56

CTank

11 posts

139 months

Saturday 15th February 2020
quotequote all
Dr Doofenshmirtz said:
Nice to see some Epos speaker owners here.
I worked for the original Epos Acoustics back in the 80's before they were sold to Mordaunt-Short. I wonder if anyone owns an original Epos ES-14 set? I may have assembled them for you...I was the soldering expert for the crossover mainly (a single capacitor inline with the tweeter) smile

Edited by Dr Doofenshmirtz on Friday 14th February 21:56
I’ve run a pair of ES14’s for the last three or for years. Lovely speakers, totally lacking in mid-band grain, and ‘fast’ in a way I haven’t heard anything else match. The matching stands are essential, I heard a great improvement once I tracked a pair down.

After borrowing a pair of LS3/5a’s for a couple of months, I’ve now got the hankering for some small sealed BBC type speakers (monkey coffins, as I saw them referred to recently).

Going to put the EPOS back in this afternoon, and see if I can contemplate swapping them.

Crackie

6,386 posts

242 months

Saturday 15th February 2020
quotequote all
gizlaroc said:
I have saved that to listen to later.


Sounds right up my Straße as well!

This is my soundcloud page....

https://soundcloud.com/guymiddleton


Lots of sassy laid back deep bassy numbers on there.
Thanks for the link...... some top work there. clap

SAB888

3,240 posts

207 months

Sunday 16th February 2020
quotequote all
Itsallicanafford said:
Ha! Listen to one now on my office system...

Holy crap, I have both of those in the attic I assume, haven't seen them in years. Was really into Technics. Think I have a tape deck as well.

Itsallicanafford

Original Poster:

2,764 posts

159 months

Sunday 16th February 2020
quotequote all
^ snap! I have the M5 tape desk as well. I think they are really nice units, there is quite a bit of crackle on the volume pot but by streaming through a computer you don’t need to adjust this manually on the unit. Get it out of the loft and enjoy!

Dr Doofenshmirtz

15,220 posts

200 months

Sunday 16th February 2020
quotequote all
CTank said:
Dr Doofenshmirtz said:
Nice to see some Epos speaker owners here.
I worked for the original Epos Acoustics back in the 80's before they were sold to Mordaunt-Short. I wonder if anyone owns an original Epos ES-14 set? I may have assembled them for you...I was the soldering expert for the crossover mainly (a single capacitor inline with the tweeter) smile

Edited by Dr Doofenshmirtz on Friday 14th February 21:56
I’ve run a pair of ES14’s for the last three or for years. Lovely speakers, totally lacking in mid-band grain, and ‘fast’ in a way I haven’t heard anything else match. The matching stands are essential, I heard a great improvement once I tracked a pair down.

After borrowing a pair of LS3/5a’s for a couple of months, I’ve now got the hankering for some small sealed BBC type speakers (monkey coffins, as I saw them referred to recently).

Going to put the EPOS back in this afternoon, and see if I can contemplate swapping them.
Nice one. I'd love to know what happened to Robin Marshall the guy that set up Epos. He used to drive a white Citroen SM we called The Great White Whale smile
Also Phil the technical chap who used to test listen to every pair of speakers before we boxed them up. He used to shout 'It's a leaker' if one of the sealing gaskets had failed...god knows how he could tell, but nothing got past him.

GRL

252 posts

224 months

Thursday 20th February 2020
quotequote all
Robin Marshall retired many moons ago. He’s very happily living in France but now runs an old 911! Best boss I ever had.

J.R.B.

319 posts

192 months

Thursday 20th February 2020
quotequote all
I had Epos speakers for a few years. Fantastic sounding things. I upgraded and kept them boxed up for years as they were worth bugger all but sounded great. Had a clear out a few weeks ago and like most of the stuff I sold were bought by an Eastern European chap. They seem to have much more appreciation for our great old good equipment than we do!

Ambleton

6,655 posts

192 months

Thursday 12th March 2020
quotequote all
Stereo pair:
Ruark Prologue ones

Centre:
Ruark dialogue one

Rears:
Linn 5110s (I do have a pair of Ruark Epilogues, but I like the size of the linns and they're fine little speakers)

Sub:
Rel Strata V

AVR:
Yamaha DSP-Z7

Sources:
Yamaha music cast using Deezer HiFi
PS3 (DVD, blu ray, SACD)
55" LG smart TV

Cables:
Fronts are 4x4mm VannDamme pro black series. Stereo pair bi-amped. Centre bi-wired. This is pretty meaty cable!

VannDamme hi level interconnect for sub

Rears I think are QED 42strand, but cant recall 100% nothing overly fancy but fine for surround.

Optical from TV to AVR. 8k HDMI cables from PS3 to AVR and AVR to TV.

QED Graphite Performance interconnect between MusicCast and AVR.

We have recently acquired a house rabbit. So I've just finished making a tv stand to house everything in such a way that all cables are well out of reach and put some trunking in to conceal any others that were within reach.